Jonny
a lot of people have asked how I am and I have told a lot of people that there are no words. To be honest though, the more and more messages I got, and the more and more people I have spoken to, I’ve realised that I was wrong. There are words. And there are lots of them. And they have been words which have been used over and over to describe Gill.
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Lovely
Funny
Amazing
Kind
Sunny
Sweet soul, my first friend, my best friend, like a sister
A lovely, gentle, smiley person
She always had a smile, a huge smile, even when times were tough
Warm
The absolute world to me
A beautiful person inside and out
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Gill had a tremendous capacity to love and every one of us felt that always. Her pride in her beautiful children, Zak and Mia, all they have achieved and who they are, was absolute. My mum and dad felt that love too in how she would do anything and everything she could for them. And we brothers felt it too - we were blessed to be such a tight group of 3 with never a cross word between us (at least since we were kids, there might have been one or two cross words and a scrap or two back in the 70s…). We both had our own unique relationship with her and then another one again as a three.
Gill always amazed me with her ability to see the good in everyone she met. She met some of my friends up in Leeds every now again on various occasions – wedding, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah – and the impression she always left was all of the above. None of my friends who met her ever saw me without asking how she was. She left a happy afterglow everywhere she went.
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She was funny. She made me laugh and I made her laugh. We both laughed at (I mean with) my brother Stevie. As Lucy, my wife will testify, not everyone else knew what the hell we were laughing at. In fact, I’m not sure we always did but we still laughed. Particularly that time when she was about 15, I was about 13 and Stevie 8, and we were practicing our limboing skills (and I use the word 'skills’ in the very very loosest sense) and she somehow fell into the cupboard under the stairs, head first into all the coats, the door closing behind her. You probably had to be there, but we were still laughing about that over 40 years later.
Gill lived in London while I stayed up north in Leeds so we didn’t see each other as often as we’d have liked. However, we talked all the time, at least every week and often more. Mostly about nothing in particular but still somehow about everything. Friends, family, work, books, memories, nonsense, everything. We’d talk for 20 minutes, say goodbye and somehow still be talking half an hour later. Getting in from work, squash, whatever, settling down, calling my sis. Since the pandemic we tended to facetime and - small blessings - it made us feel close when we were far apart. Those talks, those laughs, conversations about nothing and everything, they’re going to be a big absence which it’s very hard to contemplate.
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As Stevie said, Gill was also super-intelligent. At school she worked incredibly hard and got what she deserved. She worked just as hard in her career too and excelled there as well. Her work ethic was, to her younger brothers, terrifying.
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In amongst all that, she raised two wonderful children to be two incredible young adults, my beautiful and talented nephew and niece, Zak and Mia.
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And we know that Gill, and of course Zak and Mia, went through so much, with Andy’s illness and tragic passing 4 years ago. I know she missed him every single day.
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Still, her generosity and compassion for others never waned. Still she comforted others, including me, whenever I or they needed it. And still her laughter and sunshine shone through.
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She was my big sister, I loved her and I will miss her forever. But that’s what I’ll remember when I think of her.